NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - The aid community's emergency appeal system is "completely dysfunctional" -- most appeals are never
met and millions of people are left with no relief in a disaster or conflict, economist Jeffrey Sachs said.
From Haiti's earthquake to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the floods in Pakistan, the full amount of money requested by the United Nations to help people after a
crisis is rarely obtained.
Sachs, who is also the U.N.'s special advisor on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), told a press briefing last week that an overhaul of the way emergency funds were raised was required.
"Going out with an emergency appeal which is not met is really, at this point, completely dysfunctional. We've got the system upside down where we handle these emergencies ... we
never raise the kinds of funds that are needed in time and then don't have the kind of orderly response," Sachs said, speaking via a videolink from Washington.
"We need the ability to respond quickly, predictably with the emergency aid and then the transition back to help get development started."
UNDERFUNDED
The United Nations is currently appealing for funds to help people hit by natural disasters, conflicts and food problems in over 20 countries including Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen
and Zimbabwe, according to its Financial Tracking Service (FTS).
But none of these appeals has been met -- with appeals for Uganda, Guatemala, Central African Republic, Kyrgyzstan and Iraq being the most underfunded.
Aid workers say lack of funds often means they have to scale down operations which could include cutting food rations, withdrawing health services or financial support for communities to restart their lives.
Sachs said a "normal financing response" was required whereby institutions such as the World Bank or Asian Development Bank, in the case of Pakistan, could immediately provide emergency aid and then the funds could be replenished over time.
"It could be through countries paying a kind of insurance premium for natural hazards or it could through the donor countries honouring long-term commitments," he said.
"It's not a critique of how disorganised the U.N. is, but of how urgent appeals go wanting and how we haven't created, in all this time, a systematic response that reflects the reality of
the number of crises and challenges that we are facing."
RICH NATIONS' COMMITMENTS
As world leaders gather in New York to take stock of efforts made to meet the MDGs ahead of a 2015 deadline, Sachs said it was imperative that rich nations honoured their commitments on development assistance.
Forty years ago, rich nations promised to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as foreign aid but that has not happened, he said, adding that the United States
was spending 0.2 percent of its GNP on foreign aid compared to the five percent on the military.
Sachs said investing in the eight goals -- targets which include reducing poverty and hunger, improving maternal mortality rates, increasing primary school education and reversing the spread of AIDS -- would cost Western nations less than if they had to respond to an emergency.
"Is this a global community that really, truly honours the statements that it makes? Can it understand that when we fail to do so, not only is there untold suffering but there is also a
far higher cost to pay in the long-run?"
"That's the kind of cost we are seeing in impoverished countries like Afghanistan, in the frontier provinces of Pakistan or the Horn of Africa or Yemen or other places that become war zones because they are left in neglect for so long."
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